Joint meeting of Governments must unblock disbursement of €100m

The joint meeting of the Romanian and Moldovan executives must solve the problem of the disbursement of the €100 million promised by Romania in assistance to Moldova, said the Romanian Center for European Policies, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. An annual report made public by the Center says that as a member of the EU, Romania is obliged to become a donor of assistance for development and Moldova tops the list of beneficiaries. The given funds are managed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has a special bureau. “In 2011, this bureau managed €2.3 million, €800,000 of which went over the Prut. Unfortunately, the creation of a Romanian Agency for Development is delayed. Other states, even from Eastern Europe, have such agencies in Moldova. The Center recommends setting up the RoAid agency that would make Romania’s assistance to Moldova coherent and visible,” says the report. Report authors Cristian Ghinea, the Center’s head, and Dragos Dinu, coordinator of the public sector, say the most important assistance for Moldova – the €100 million pledged by President Traian Basescu in April 2010 - has not been yet disbursed. The only money allocated in two years was the €8 million provided after the floods of 2010 that affected Moldova. The development ministries of the two countries turned out to be unable to cooperate and work out a methodology or attract projects from the local authorities of Moldova. “The implementation of the project is delayed for political and procedural reasons. Ideas are made public that this money should be used to construct the Iasi-Ungheni gas pipe, outfit the schools with information technology, and build bridges over the Prut. But these ideas show incoherence and confusion. The project does not work as planned,” said the Romanian specialists. The Romanian Center for European Policies proposed creating a Moldova –Romania Common Development Fund within a join institutional strategy and seriously addressing the issue of assistance provision in the joint meeting of the Governments that will take place in Iasi on March 3.